Ex-VW chairman refuses to testify in German emissions investigation

Ex-Volkswagen Chairman Ferdinand Piech, who resigned after a face-off with former CEO Martin Winterkorn, has chosen not to testify to German lawmakers examining a possible government’s role in the Volkswagen emissions scandal, inning accordance with his legal representative.

Piech, likewise Volkswagen’s former CEO who led the automaker’s worldwide growth, provided statement to lawyers of U.S. law firm Jones Day in April 2016 and to German prosecutors in Braunschweig near Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg headquarters in December, his lawyer stated.

“These remarks were entirely directed at the inquirers of Jones Day and the prosecutors respectively. They were not directed at the public media,” Piech’s Hamburg-based legal representative, Gerhard Strate, informed in an emailed statement.

He told Piech has no intent to comment in public on what is being flowed as the supposed content of the questioning.

A German media report recently stated Piech had informed top directors at Volkswagen about potential cheating with diesel emissions tests in the United States six months prior to the scandal ended up being public in September 2015.

Piech has not discussed the report by Bild am Sonntag.

The unsourced report stated Piech raised the concern with Winterkorn and subsequently notified members of the supervisory board’s steering committee in March 2015 – one month before Piech was ousted as chairman.

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